


modus operandi

by haesuns



Series: boys playing god [5]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, Murder, Weird Dynamics, probably not healthy, theyre unhinged., unsure rating, violence is more metaphorical than graphic but its there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:01:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21949990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haesuns/pseuds/haesuns
Summary: Donghyuck hovers over Jaemin, eyes tracing his features in purposeful movements, veneer trickling with golden heat and legs braced at Jaemin's sides. Nine bodies, crown of bones, twenty years old.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin
Series: boys playing god [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1642027
Comments: 26
Kudos: 60





	modus operandi

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boyeater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boyeater/gifts).



> love ya mandy

"You're fucking crazy, you know."

He's knife sharp, bloodied flesh against white bone and the rings of darkness around heavy eyes, so intimately real and alive. A vivid darkness within hollow irises as he continues his ministrations along Jaemin's face, and that tinkling laugh that never fails to ring through his mind, echoing off the walls and into the emptiness. His hands are sticky against Jaemin's jaw. Blood, he realizes. There's blood under his fingernails. It shouldn't come as a surprise to him.

"You're no better than me, babe," Donghyuck says, lips stretching into a grotesque grin of blotchy purple and blue, tinged with blatantly red lies. "Look at yourself." His fingers are harsh, digging against the hard angle of his jaw, then unbelievably soft. Somehow, both nothing and everything like the grin splitting his lips. The living room is a yawning cavern of darkness, only occasionally broken by the afternoon light that slices through the blinds, rustling from the wind filtering through the tattered screen door. Strangely—or perhaps, not strange in the least—Donghyuck's presence doesn't disrupt the shadows. They move with him, morph around his form, preying upon the weight under his eyes and upon Jaemin.

"Fuck off."

_Look at yourself_ , he says, as if it's the easiest thing in the world. He's never said it any differently, after all, never fearing his own reflection upon cracked silver glass, mirrors flecked with water droplets and toothpaste and blood. It at least gives one place where Jaemin can draw a line and see the difference. Hard to look at, easy to imagine—a maw lined with too many teeth, long lashes fanned out over eyes that squint against the harshness of an unrelenting sun. Himself, mixed with Donghyuck, as though they've cut out pieces of each other with clumsy, fumbling hands until they couldn't tell who was who anymore. An amalgamation, he thinks. A science experiment gone wrong, a push-and-pull of the mind too far gone to be anything close to comprehensible at this point.

But Donghyuck is Donghyuck, and Jaemin is Jaemin. He doesn't think any amount of killing will change that.

\--

"Why are we here?"

Donghyuck turns his head with a frown etched upon his features but keeps walking, a steady _drip drip_ against cracked concrete, rivulets of dark crimson from his hands. No, not quite. From _their_ hands, and Jaemin's pounding heart.

"Don't think I follow, Jaemin," is his response, laced with the raspy nonchalance of someone who's never cared enough to do anything that isn't for himself. Cold, wind-battered skies, devoid of clouds and full of nothing but the sun's unloving rays. An ironic yearning for winter.

Jaemin sighs. Even now, the evening air balloons his lungs and burns him with ice from the inside out, and he tears his eyes away from Donghyuck.

"Why are we so far out here, I mean. Not even the suburbs. The very edge."

It's true, and they both know it. A plateau between humanity and the woods, riddled with sharp branches and no gentler than their summer nights pierced with chill. But Donghyuck laughs, a huffing noise through his nose, and the balance between worlds tips and sends Jaemin crashing to the ground like always. His pieces would get scattered into nowhere if not for the fact that Donghyuck hits rewind on their tape and lets it happen all over again.

"No feds," quips Donghyuck with ease, and just for a second, Jaemin remembers why he loves Donghyuck as they come to a stop at the side of the convenience store. Unrelentingly real, the traces of his very being stifling the radio silence, filling the cracks between shitty asphalt beyond repair and the beckoning evergreen trees out further. "No chances of getting caught."

Any semblance of common sense abandons itself in the streets bordering the forest, a place where the radio signal goes haywire, distorting useless warnings for deaf ears as sickly yellow headlights hurtle out into foggy nothingness. _That can't be right_ , Jaemin wants to insist, an unusual petulance that punctuates his mind and almost makes him forget they're dragging a body. Still, it's too much of a pain in the ass to tug the heavy sack along, too annoying to be forgotten so easily.

But he can't bring himself to argue against Donghyuck's logic. Not out here, not like this. They certainly haven't been caught yet, have they? Too many questions with answers that neither of them can be bothered to consider in this little town of theirs, tangled between calloused fingers and bated breath with no escape, no closure, never-ending in its cruel nature. The world's a bitch, as Donghyuck might eloquently put it, one leg kicked up over the other as their bottles of cheap booze clang against each other. Brown glass becomes rich amber in the sunset, and Donghyuck holds summer-cast shadows in the depths of his eyes.

Still. That's then, and this is now. Jaemin doesn't want to say he knows better, because he really doesn't know anything other than the pendulum of twilight, always swinging between life and death with no constant other than hushed secrets. Jaemin reckons that Donghyuck would have no problem whispering their little songs of death to the town, no problem exposing them just a little bit more for the sake of causing that extra ripple. Something more beyond the shock of discovering another missing person.

It'd be useless, though, and it's precisely why Jaemin drags him back everytime Donghyuck toes a little too close to that border, no matter if Donghyuck kicks and screams all the way back. Everyone out this far from the city becomes nothing more than the rotting remains of a condor, picking on scraps only where it concerns them and flying away without a care, heavy wings sending a flurry of black feathers spiraling to the ground. They're used to it at this point, and so is Donghyuck. Corpses in action, decay in the air.

He's insignificant in the grand scheme of things, really, but the splash of chilly river water against his leg startles him out of his thoughts and back to reality. It doesn't matter. Not when Donghyuck is by his side.

The water laps at his shoes and soaks through the scuffed material, an unpleasant sensation that seeps past his socks and attacks the extremities—not that there's anything particularly pleasant about the situation in the first place, of course. Pain in the ass, Jaemin's brain reminds him, broken record muffled with static, omnipresent irritation like the clanking of empty cans down the streets. At least only the river bears the burden of carrying the body away, now.

\--

It's a strange thing, the dance they do around each other, feet light against the ground as they wait for the other to stumble and bring everything crashing down. Whether it's a stumble that sends them careening into each other's arms or into an anticipating blade, though, is about as clear as the smeared mirrors in their house, cracked and uncertain from the pounding of fists embedded with glass. Blood, blood. Repeated over and over to the point where it doesn't feel like a real word on Jaemin's tongue anymore.

"I could kill you, y'know," Jaemin says, an abrupt statement for someone with his mouth branded against Donghyuck's neck, tracing every slope as if it's his duty to memorize it down to the smallest atom. He feels the rumble of laughter against his raw lips, presses his tongue against barely-salty skin only for Donghyuck to lace his fingers in his hair and tug him up.

His chest rises and falls shakily, an unsteady gravitation towards Jaemin's heart, and muted rose stains the apples of his cheeks, hair fanned out against the ratty couch cushions. Donghyuck's eyes burn with something wild, begging to be released from its soil-rusted chains, and Jaemin finds something oddly satisfying in his gaze. Maybe it's the fact that he's the only one who can make Donghyuck see the world as anything but dead.

"What makes you say that?"

He utters it slow and deliberate, drugged with deathly inarticulate infatuation—it makes Jaemin want to laugh by instinct, reactionary and mindless. He doesn’t. Just lets his teeth graze against his throat, drawing a hiss from Donghyuck’s lips above and a cautionary swat against the arm braced at his side, a familiar pinkish sting.

"Answer the question," Donghyuck demands.

"Don't be an asshole." A murmur accompanied with a nosing against his jaw, the same song and dance. Jaemin doesn't remember specifics. There's one constant, and it's provocation to get any sort of response out of Donghyuck, whether it ends with a blade below the chin or not.

"Bold talk from you." Bastard.

But Jaemin hums, smiles against his neck again, drawing away on his own accord just to watch Donghyuck gnaw at his lip in frustration and whine. Jaemin doesn't remember holding his wrists down, but there's a sick amusement to watching the inkling of desperation color his features before they fall into flatline silence once more.

"I'm just saying, it could happen."

"Would you do it?"

A sickly saccharine croon, a kick of bitter almonds straight to the unsuspecting gut, privy to his cyanide-laced whisperings. They already know the answer.

"Wouldn't you?"

\--

Donghyuck speaks and moves with hasteful contagion. He uproots the most deep-set of trees, lets their gnarled roots rain earth from where he suspends them, destroys silently. From the beginning, Jaemin knows he won't be any different.

But, here's the thing. No matter how much Donghyuck destroys him, his fingers always reach to put him back together again. Rewind the tape. Press play. Rewind again. Blood under the nails, always there, _always_ , muscles taut. There's nothing elegant or earth-shattering about it—Jaemin's just lucky that Donghyuck takes the worst of it out on others.

He plunges knives into the side of necks in a clean, practiced motion that makes Jaemin's fingers slide up to the expanse his own throat. Wondering, watching. It's another obscure soul, perhaps one of the less corpse-like and more human of the bunch, some guy who can't be very far from their age.

Sometimes, Jaemin's mind tells him that these are people with lives ahead of them, silenced by Donghyuck's will and mutilated beyond recognition to make up for some imprecise grief of his. And just as quickly, he barks out a bitter laugh, reminds himself that if they _really_ wanted to get out of this hellscape, they'd have done it sooner.

It's ironic, actually. Jaemin knows they're no different, trapped in the haunting shadows of otherworldly trees, and it makes him wonder if hell is just a forgotten town in a shrouded forest on earth.

And, Donghyuck, well. Certainly there are more efficient ways of killing than to drag someone out and trace the lines of their face with a blade, never enough to pierce the skin. But Jaemin sees the way he'll rip right through them like he's trying to tear the universe apart at the seams, wrestle them down like there's something in those blood-soaked bones that he wants from Jaemin, and it makes sense.

"Nine," he says, and one of Donghyuck's eyebrows flinches upwards, bemused, face speckled with red and seeking explanation.

"Nine what?"

"Nine times we've gotten away with this. Just seven for you, though, if you count the kill as an individual task."

Donghyuck rolls his eyes, spins the blade in his hand like he's considering burying it in Jaemin's thigh, settles for the space between the corpse's ribs instead. Body count.

"Two people on your part isn't much to brag about."

"I'm not looking to brag."

"That'd be a first," Donghyuck retorts, sliding the blade out from swiftly-chilling flesh with a sense of appraisal. The hum he gives is enough to tell Jaemin that he's fine leaving the body as-is.

"Maybe you don't know me well enough then, hm?"

The laugh Donghyuck gives him is as sharp as ever, genuinely amused in a way that makes Jaemin's stomach twist in whatever indecipherable emotion Donghyuck decides to deliver this time. It might be love, Jaemin considers. Only maybe.

"Don't be stupid, Jaemin." Hands laden with dripping crimson silk, pulling him closer still before he can breathe. Copper blood on his lips, fingers against his pulse, a harsh breath through the nose, and it's over in a second. Donghyuck smirks, brimstone in Jaemin's garden—Jaemin wants to wipe that expression away and leave him gasping for air.

"I'm the only one in this town who'll know you, all the way down to the grave."

\--

Rain again, rain like always, echoing through the woods and hammering against the flats of leaves, rusted tin, fractured glass, all lined along the hillside smattering of buildings. It thrums against streaked glass and the house's exterior, and the radio behind Jaemin crackles to life, causing him to turn with a start. It's Donghyuck, of course, fingers on its buttons, looking up with an oddly gentle smile.

"Station's live," he whispers in that infuriatingly soft way, like he speaks quieter just to make people lean in and strain to listen, drawing them in just to twist the knife into their abdomen. Not people—Jaemin only. He does it solely to Jaemin.

" _—reporting another missing person case, live from your local station. Good morning, listeners, this is R.D. with—_ "

Donghyuck cuts in with a sneer and a laugh, shoulders shaking, fingers falling away from the buttons of the radio. "Does he really think people don't know his identity?"

Jaemin shushes him with a snicker, a goading smile that says: _let him believe_. He'll always be more of a conspiracy theorist than a news reporter, anyway.

" _A shame, really, at such a young age. Ah, but that's how it is up here. For all we know, he could've just packed his bags and gotten the hell out of here, huh?_ " A laugh, uncaring, and Jaemin shakes his head, head falling back against the arm of the couch.

"How annoying. Nobody here ever knows shit. No appreciation for the craft," Jaemin says. A pause, the telltale gurgle of the coffee machine from their kitchen, footsteps before Donghyuck decidedly drapes himself onto Jaemin, hands sliding down to the angles of his body. "Should we kill him one of these days?"

"Huh? No, he's fun, don't you think?"

"Fun? Darling, you're just about the only interesting little thing in this place," Jaemin replies, looking down at Donghyuck's faraway eyes, gazing off past the rain-soaked wooden walls to a place unknown to Jaemin. White ceramic ringed with long-dried coffee at his side, dark waves framing his face, locks obscuring his brows and round eyes peeking through, suddenly snapped back to reality.

He looks innocent. Jaemin knows otherwise.

"You haven't thought of anything as fun since we were seventeen," Donghyuck insists. There they are, the specifics Jaemin is always pushing away only for Donghyuck to cut into his head and pluck them out with glee.

"Untrue. You're entertaining."

"Besides me. I've talked to him once, you know, up by the water tower a few months ago."

It's an easy image to conjure—rickety old wood that sighs and groans with every breath of the wind, graffiti-riddled legs plunged into the earth, waiting for the day the land finally swallows it whole. It'll never come in their lifetime.

"That old thing? Why?" The implications are vast, crackling with an unspoken possessiveness that draws a giggle from Donghyuck.

"Don't be that way. I told you, I think he'd be fun, if he knew how to pull his head out of the clouds just for a second. He'll suffocate like that. Even then, he seems wary of us. How intriguing." Predatory, claws waiting to sink in, wickedly tender until the final moments.

"Thought you didn't want to kill him."

"I don't." Raised eyebrows, unspoken questions, a squeeze to the flesh of Jaemin's thigh.

"Handsy," he mutters.

"What, gonna cut 'em off or something?"

"Focus on the subject."

"I thought I'd already answered all your questions, Jaemin." Donghyuck pulls Jaemin's shoulder, rolling him flat onto his back and knocking the breath from his lungs when he meets his gaze. The entirety of Jaemin's life packed into one lithe, merciless body, every inch of its expanse mapped upon his hands, trembling, waiting for what comes next. When Jaemin looks at him, he understands what Donghyuck means when he says the world will never be enough for him.

"Don't be afraid to change things up."

He hovers over Jaemin, eyes tracing his features in purposeful movements, veneer trickling with golden heat and legs braced at Jaemin's sides. Nine bodies, crown of bones, twenty years old.

\--

"I don't think I'd mind if the woods took me back someday," the boy tells Jaemin. Boy? No, Jaemin's fairly certain they're the same age. "The plants can find a place to grow between my ribs, and that'd be fine. Do you ever think about it?"

"Sometimes," Jaemin says, unconvincingly, and it almost makes him laugh. He's always been a terrible liar. "But there are better places for it than here."

"It never works, though."

And Jaemin's gaze flits over to him, scans the slope of his nose and those oddly shining eyes, and he gets it. Donghyuck was right. The asphalt is cracked where their feet rest, moonlit-silver hair awry, distant clanging of handmade windchimes on a stranger's porch and damp wood creaking. Deathly quiet for eternity, ghosts in the mist.

"Of course not. Nobody gets out of here the way they want to."

A flash of understanding when their eyes lock, a sudden creeping trepidation swiftly overpowered by the grin that overtakes Jaemin's face.

Jaemin knows.

Renjun knows it, too.

\--

"You talked to him, then." Not a question—an observation, plain and simple, spoken as Jaemin's head is leaned into the crook of Donghyuck's neck. It's warm, nice, too nice. For a few moments, he can forget the fact that the world could quash them both at any moment, victim to none other than themselves.

"I did." A week ago. A new addition to the mobius strip highlight reel.

Donghyuck hums at the affirmation, leans his cheek against the top of Jaemin's head, and Jaemin hears an abrupt snort that sounds above him.

"Take a goddamn shower."

Jaemin frowns. "It's the humidity."

"God, okay, whatever. Just tell me what happened."

Jaemin shuffles against Donghyuck's side and pulls himself closer as if to destroy the space between them, melding them into one being. "We chatted on his porch. Northside, close to that park. I thought he was one of those people who are desperate to get out of here."

"And was he?"

A sigh of indignation. "No," Jaemin concedes, and Donghyuck snickers in an unspoken _I told you so_ gesture. "But he still spouts nonsensical bullshit."

"Sounds like a dreamer," Donghyuck wonders, voice trailing off, shadows that slink between the trees under a red moon. Mint gum between his teeth, the miniscule pop of a weak bubble. He uses his feet to tug the blanket pooling over the side of the couch towards them.

"Sounds like he's lost it."

"Haven't we all? Same town, same life, every single day. If he's anything like us, I'm surprised he hasn't become one of us by now." Donghyuck, ever the weaver of riddles to snake up the body and tighten around the throat, all with his hand caressing Jaemin's coaxingly.

If they ever dream about leaving, they never say it.

\--

" _—advise us to stay alert when walking alone, even during the day. We have yet another missing person case, a young man by the name of J—_ "

Jaemin nearly drops the white mug, clammy fingers clamped around its handle as he whips over to Donghyuck, sending the liquid at its abyssal bottom sloshing precariously.

"That's not ours." _And that's not his voice_ , he doesn't say, but they hear it anyway.

Electrified heartbeat for the first time in months, an incessant pounding in his chest, and Donghyuck's eyes are just as wild as he feels, a sensation that claws against his ribcage. With the ivory-white knife in his hands, Jaemin fears just for a second that he'll sink it hilt-deep into the nearest surface that isn't himself, awakening a beast much worse than the first—oh, but he doesn't.

No, nothing like that at all. A slow smile creeps onto his lips, pine branches knocking against the windows in their wind-tossed frenzy, and he doesn't meet Jaemin's gaze.

A knocking at the door. 10:49 a.m., and it brings Jaemin's heart to a hard-brake stop. Nobody ever knocks.

The knife twirls, dizzying, shining with visions of unshed blood and the endless tears of the woods.

Donghyuck looks up.

"Answer the door, Jaemin. We have company."

Jaemin understands. The beast is awake.

**Author's Note:**

> i had a certain idea for the implications of the ending. but im curious as to what you guys think :] big luv thank u for reading! comments are appreciated!
> 
> haesunns on twt


End file.
